This leads to the identification of the two primary cultural/social institutions that show a traditional and an extreme resistance to the development of homosexual rights in Muslim societies: the state and the family. Hegel identified a close relationship between these two institutions, as the family establishes both the internal and external (i.e. social and sexual) roles of its members in a way that creates the basic social structure of the state -- but influence works both ways. It is not merely that the family creates the state, then, but that the state also influences the formation and form of the family. In other words, "the family is a universal institution which performs certain specific functions essential to society's survival" (Shifting the Center p. 7). The Islamic religion and Muslim society are in danger from homosexuality, according to many state governments and the religious hierarchy, so the family is invoked as...
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